Metacognitive Strategy Training In College English Listening Instruction

In recent years, many researchers have been attracted to the research of metacognitive strategy. Regarded as a higher-order executive skill, it involves an ability to consciously use metacognitive knowledge to plan, monitor and evaluate the learning process. Once having a good command of metacognitive strategy, students will be able to assess the situation, to plan and select appropriate strategies, to coordinate them, to monitor or evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies used and to revise their plans whenever necessary.So far, research on learning strategies has pointed to the powerful role of metacognition in language learning and the potential for greater use of metacognitive strategy in the learning process. However, little has been reported about metacognitive strategy training, especially in listening, which is the most important skill for input in learning a second or foreign language. Therefore, it is of great need to carry out such training so as to have a better understanding of this topic.The present research aims to investigate the relationship between metacognitive strategy training and students' listening comprehension. In addition, the potential effect of the training on students' language proficiency improvement was also examined in this study. A total of 96 freshmen (46 of them belonging to the experimental group and 50 of them belonging to the comparison group) from Guilin University of Technology at Naming were picked as subjects for the current research. After one semester of metacognitive strategy training on the experimental group, major findings are drawn as follows: (1) Metacognitive strategy training has significant effects on increasing students' metacognitive awareness; (2) Metacognitive strategy training is positively correlated with the improvement of students' listening comprehension; (3)Metacognitive strategy training in listening class does have a potential positive effect on students' language proficiency improvement; (4) Differences between successful and unsuccessful listeners are reflected in the range of strategies used and the way in which individual strategy is used.Based on the findings of the current research, some pedagogical implications for metacognitive strategy training are discussed, and corresponding limitations and suggestions are included in the paper so as to promote future research in this field.